Rogue snake metaphor

Bizarre report of a snake swallowing N36 million in the vault of the Benue State office of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), made interesting headlines last week.

A JAMB sales clerk, Philomina Chieshe stunned a high-powered fact-finding team when she told them she could not account for the money realized from sales of scratch cards because a snake crept into the vault and swallowed it. When prodded, she explained that her housemaid connived with another JAMB staff to ‘spiritually’ steal the money through a snake.

And she would want her audience to believe the story. Why not? After all, are such fables not commonplace in our national life? If she did not believe it could make sense to some people; if she had not seen people peddling and swallowing such mystic and occult stories hook line and sinker, perhaps she would not have come up with such concoction.

Alas, she believed it could pull through. Hence the ease and seeming innocence with which she crafted a story that should ordinarily have qualified her for psychiatric attention. She is not alone in this kind of weird belief.

In our daily social life, many well informed and even highly educated Nigerians promote this kind of thrash to deceive and hoodwink innocent citizens for some self-serving ends. So Philomina’s narrative, as naïve and unbelievable as it would seem, fits into an uncanny metaphor to illustrate the pervasiveness of corruption on these shores.

It highlights the weird belief system many of our people have come to accept and live with. Promoted by all manner of preachers and mundane cultural practices, such tales have assumed a dominant role in explaining (albeit falsely) most of the challenges thrown up in our daily lives. All manner of places of worship and persons take liberty in accounting for and rationalizing human challenges through spiritual means. Even when there is no basis for these irrational explanations, such tales are invented by the unscrupulous and deceitful to achieve ends of mischievous and pecuniary nature.

Sickness, misfortune and even deaths have been the worst victims of these supernatural and mystic explanations. And because of the vicissitudes of life in a predominantly illiterate and poverty stricken environment, many have come to accept such fetish and irrational explanations for some of the challenges they face in their daily lives. So Philomina was just exploiting the inherent weaknesses of our belief systems. Do you blame her when such stories are daily promoted in our television stations as real accounts of African life? Those who regularly promote disappearing and mundane relics of African culture in the name of ‘African Magic’ and similar programmes should share in Philomina’s confusion.

But she goofed because snakes are not known to feed on currencies. Neither can one or a colony of snakes effectively swallow N36 million. She misfired because in this case, she will be required to prove beyond reasonable doubt that snakes could in all actuality swallow that amount of money. For her inability to differentiate between facts and fiction; normative beliefs and credible evidence, the snake rogue should be taken as a metaphor for the official in whose care the money disappeared.

So it is not enough to peddle stories on the escapades of witches and wizards. Neither is it sufficient to seek escape route from the numerous ills that afflict mankind by attributing them to the unseen hands of some ghosts, the dead and the vampires. There is a limit beyond which such stories will no longer make sense. That is perhaps, the point that has been brought to the fore by the story of the rogue snake.

Beyond this however, Philomina’s story illustrates the degenerate level into which corruption has irretrievably sunk in our national life. It is an acceptance that public funds can be frittered and all manner of ruse invented to successfully cover them up. That such a colossal sum of money could be left in the hands of a common clerk also speaks volumes on probity and accountability in our public life. And if one may ask, what happened to the bank account of that establishment that a whooping N36 million had to be kept in the safe such that we are now being told the ridiculous and lame story that it has been swallowed by a snake.

As if this was not enough embarrassment, another state coordinator of the same establishment in Nassarawa State has come up with another strange story to cover up alleged fraud. The official was said to have claimed his car got bunt together with N23million worth of scratch cards.

Diligent investigations were however to reveal that the cards which the official claimed to have been burnt together with his car were actually used up by prospective students from Nassarawa State to register for JAMB within the same period. Obvious from the two accounts is the degenerate level into which corruption had sunk in the operations of JAMB. If the accounts of the two incidents are anything to go by then, it could be safely concluded that the establishment had been stinking in dismal corruption and corrupt practices all this while.

It is also very confounding how colossal sums of public funds are left in the hands of some unscrupulous staff to manage only for them to fritter them away and cook up frivolous stories to cover up their tracks. Perhaps, if the current investigations had not been set up, the suspects would have conveniently covered up their tracks with the nation losing scare resources direly needed for developmental purposes.

But that is this country for you. All these happened as the current administration was waging the war against corruption with fanfare. And if you ask them of their score card in the last three years or so, they will quickly brandish the war against corruption as one of their major achievements. The war could as well have recorded some measure of success in retrieving some monies looted by past political office holders. We have also seen a measure of progress in the recovery of some properties from both former political appointees and civil servants even as the target has mainly been those opposed to the government of the day.

Events have however, shown we are yet to get at the bottom of the factors that propel and reinforce corruption in our national life. A former governor was reported to have said recently that corruption is the real problem of this country and not restructuring. He is partly right. But the proper way to put the matter is that corruption feeds from our inability to restructure. Corruption thrives because of our inability or refusal to restructure. Corruption is encouraged because of the awesome powers of the central government and its perception as an avenue from which the constituents should grab at will. That is why the two JAMB officials had no qualms inventing all manner of subterfuge to cover up the missing monies in their possession.

That is the situation you get with such unwieldy national establishments performing functions that are better managed by smaller and more efficient organizations. If the universities were allowed to conduct their own examinations and set their admission benchmarks, an omnibus and ineffective institution like JAMB would have found no place. What is true of JAMB is no less correct of other national establishments. Decentralization or devolution of powers will promote more efficient and effective governance and reduce corruption.

The much touted war against corruption will continue to remain a mirage as long as it has not touched the fabric of our society. The rogue snake denotes the lady under whose care the N36 million disappeared while in the raging fire can be found the man in whose care the N23 million was left. That is the metaphor of the unmitigated corruption that strides the entire gamut of our national life. That is how bad the situation has remained and a measure of success of the war against corruption.